Steve Fuller reviews Francis Collins

God and science: You just can’t please everyone
A Review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God

By Steve Fuller
From NewScientist 26 August 2006, p. 48.

Denying the real conflict between religion and science is a sure formula for confusion, finds STEVE FULLER.
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Let me start by declaring an interest: I am that Steve Fuller who gave evidence for the defence in the trial over whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in school in Dover, Pennsylvania, last year. And books like this persuade me that I did the right thing.

*The Language of God* is by Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Project for the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He became a born-again Christian after reading C. S. Lewis’s *Mere Christianity* as a biochemistry graduate student. Collins is now part of the American ScientificAffiliation, a group of 3000 Christians which aims to render science consistent with its beliefs.

Collins’s mission is to deny any real conflict between God and Darwin. He wants to square things for scientists who don’t want intelligent design on their doorstep but who also don’t want to examine their own beliefs too closely. Collins’s comprehensive but exclusive training in the hard sciences may explain his belief in a God who communicates plainly through natural sciences but who refuses to cooperate with social sciences, and such biologically inflected fields as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. These latter fields, Collins asserts, would reduce “the existence of the moral laws and the universal longing for God” to culturally specific or deeply genetic survival strategies.

In trying to accommodate too many camps, Collins ends up mired in confusion. Ironically, rather like Richard Dawkins, he treats religions equally, thereby homogenising them. Collins promotes “theistic evolution,” a philosophy sufficiently devoid of controversy, if not content, to be “espoused by many Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians, including Pope John Paul II.” It amounts to a treaty with God, whereby science does the “how” and religion the “why” of reality.

Dawkins and Collins clearly need a lesson in social science. The idea that, say, Hinduism and Islam can be lumped together is left over from 19th-century attempts to understand how complex social relations survived long stretches of time without the modern nation state. Repeating this idea uncritically in 2006 when we know better is bizarre.

As is Collins’s refusal to deal with Christianity’s uniqueness in being both most inspirational and most resistant to science. On the one hand, Christians extended the Biblical entitlement of humanity to understand and exercise dominion over nature. On the other, they baulked at theories such as Darwinism that failed to put humans on top. The alleged war between science and religion has really been a fight over the soul of Christianity.

For all their faults, intelligent-design theorists grasp this much better than Collins. Immanuel Kant argued that moral law is no more and no less than our private imitation of God’s enforcement of physical law. Subsequently, as our understanding of nature changed, our relationship to each other changed too. So when intelligent-design theorists think of a Darwinist, they don’t imagine a Collins, who see evolutionary theory as a boon to medicine. Rather, they see an animal-rights protestor who wonders, on good Darwinian but anti-Christian grounds, why human comfort has priority over animal suffering.

Collins is most interesting when he deals with his fellow Christians head-on. He invokes St. Augustine’s *The Literal Meaning of Genesis,* a treatise that still sets the standard for sophisticated exegesis. Collins interprets Augustine as saying that Genesis should not be read literally in matters that stray beyond its remit. However, devout Bible readers like Newton did not read either Genesis or Augustine that way. They simply inferred that “literal” does not mean simple-minded. From nature to the Bible, God’s works can be understood only in the original, be that mathematics and DNA, or Hebrew and Aramaic.

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* Steve Fuller is professor of sociology at the University of Warwick, U.K. his book, *Dissent Over Descent: Evolution’s 500 year war on intelligent design,* is out next year.

12 Replies to “Steve Fuller reviews Francis Collins”

Collins is most interesting when he deals with his fellow Christians
head-on. He invokes St. AugustineÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s *The Literal Meaning of Genesis,* a
treatise that still sets the standard for sophisticated exegesis. Collins
interprets Augustine as saying that Genesis should not be read literally in
matters that stray beyond its remit. However, devout Bible readers like
Newton did not read either Genesis or Augustine that way. They simply
inferred that Ã¢â‚¬Å“literalÃ¢â‚¬Â does not mean simple-minded. From nature to the
Bible, GodÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s works can be understood only in the original, be that
mathematics and DNA, or Hebrew and Aramaic.

They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed. City of God 12.10

Whoever takes another meaning out of Scripture than the writer intended, goes astray, but not through any falsehood in Scripture. On Christian Doctrine 1.41

Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. ~ James Barr Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England

“Collins is now part of the American Scientific
Affiliation, a group of 3000 Christians which aims to render science
consistent with its beliefs.”

Umm, can someone tell me what on earth that’s supposed to mean?

I think it’s safe to assume Fuller is an atheist who seems to think that there’s no possible way that science could be consistent with religion (Christianity, in particular)…? That’s clearly not the aim of the ASA, no matter what Fuller claims.

I can see their meetings as they exist in Fuller’s own mind- ‘hey guys, let’s change science to fit out “beliefs.” There. Now, we’ve distorted science to fit Christianity. Good job, onto new business…’

Nonsense. Then again, a google search quickly shows praise of Fuller from the paragons of civility at PT, so I guess nonsense is to be expected.

That’s what you get for reading the first paragraph ONLY and then commenting. I have this Steve Fuller confused with another Fuller (an anti-ID Fuller, and a very anti-religious one at that.) My google search was for the other Fuller I had in mind, so my comment here makes no sense. (ahhhh!)

David Klinghoffer, in his review of Collins’ book, notes that Collins rejects ID as “an argument from incredulity”. But here’s what Klinhoffer has to say about this conversion:

———-
Collins was hiking in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington when, as he writes, he found that “the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.”
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Klinghoffer then asks why this conversion epiphany isn’t also an “argument from incredulity” since Collins embraces belief in God because God is the only credible explanation for the wonder of nature.

Let me start by declaring an interest: I am that Steve Fuller who gave
evidence for the defence in the trial over whether intelligent design should
be taught alongside evolution in school in Dover, Pennsylvania, last year.

Houston we have a problem. No one, I repeat NO ONE, in their right mind would say the “Dover fiasco” was about “whether intelligent design should
be taught alongside evolution in school”.

“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein

Collins wrote Ã¢â‚¬Å“the majesty and beauty of GodÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.Ã¢â‚¬Â
Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€-

Klinghoffer then asks why this conversion epiphany isnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t also an Ã¢â‚¬Å“argument from incredulityÃ¢â‚¬Â since Collins embraces belief in God because God is the only credible explanation for the wonder of nature.

——————

It seems that Collins didn’t surrender to Jesus Christ in order to explain anything, but did so as an emotional response to his surroundings. If he had been a different sort of person, he might have recited a poem by Rilke, or whatever.

It’s the emotion, the experience, that counts here — and I think that Collins makes that clear, perhaps even clearer than he wants to — the turn to God is not an explanation, nor is it even — from what I can tell — intended to provide one.

A similar story is told of the arch-secularist Voltaire, whose well-known battle-cry against the Catholic Church was “crush the infamy!” As he and a friend beheld a beautiful mountain sunrise, he exclaimed, “My Lord God, I believe in You!” But then Voltaire saw how puzzled his friend was at this newfound piety, and Voltaire added, “but as for the Son, that’s another matter.”

“It seems that Collins didnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t surrender to Jesus Christ in order to explain anything, but did so as an emotional response to his surroundings. If he had been a different sort of person, he might have recited a poem by Rilke, or whatever.

ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s the emotion, the experience, that counts here Ã¢â‚¬â€ and I think that Collins makes that clear, perhaps even clearer than he wants to Ã¢â‚¬â€ the turn to God is not an explanation, nor is it even Ã¢â‚¬â€ from what I can tell Ã¢â‚¬â€ intended to provide one.”